BBC: Iraqis Living With Kidnap Terror

American soldiers having to deal with child fighters, the civilian women and children deaths outnumbering soldiers, the number of maimed and disfigured soldier casualties - along with those issues, here is another of which the American public seems to remain mostly uninformed or unaware. Typically, it takes the BBC to shine a more thorough light upon the situation:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4378255.stm

Iraqis living with kidnap terror
By Matthew Price
BBC News, Baghdad
Last Updated: Thursday, 24 March, 2005, 16:45 GMT

When you hear stories of kidnap in Iraq it is normally the story of foreign journalists or aid workers, targeted by insurgents.
Iraqis are victims of another threat - being kidnapped for money by criminal gangs.

Those gangs are why 17-year-old Hanan Zageer is now driven to school by her father Jewad. It's only a 10 minute walk from their home to Hanan's school, but after what happened two weeks ago she will not take the risk.

"A gang of criminals tried to kidnap my daughter just outside school," Mr Zageer tells me. "If it hadn't been for the guards she would have been abducted. Now I drive her every day."

- snip -

"After what happened I can't sleep, can't concentrate on my studies. I spend most days crying. I'm frightened," Hanan tells me. "I feel very sad. There is no progress. No progress in Iraq. Sometimes I sit and just think of Iraq. I can't see any solution. It's finished."

- snip -

"We can't go out. Even what we wear has changed. We used to wear what we liked freely. Now we cover ourselves more.
"They say it is freedom and democracy but nothing has changed. As school girls we never dressed like now, but we dress more conservatively because we're scared of young people who may attack us any time."

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(Not a long article, and a few days old, but worth checking out...)